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Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill will be with Laura Flanders to discuss the MainStream Media vs the Independent Press. Laura says, "We’ll take on everything from Chuck Todd and torture to saber rattling over Iran and the call for even more troops in Afghanistan. Have the media learned any lessons from Iraq?"
Ask questions here in this thread ahead of time.
There’s more turmoil in the news business today than perhaps at any other time in recent history. Newspapers are sinking, old models are failing, and public trust in news media in general is declining. Yet the mainstream media are holding onto every last bit of power they have and that often means dismissing or marginalizing independent journalists, shying away from asking the questions that matter, and trading credibility for access. At the same time independent journalists are pushing back. Two of the best in the business, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald join us tomorrow at noon eastern to discuss the decline of establishment media and who’s afraid of the independent press.
11 Comments
Thanks for the heads up!
My question: How can we best point out the hypocrisy in the mainstream media’s rapid flip from fawning over the average Iranian citizen during coverage of the protests over election fraud to the current beating of the war drums for actions that undoubtedly will kill many of these same citizens?
It is one of the same “the fawning over the Iranians out in the streets” with 24 hour coverage of those protestors while over the years the MSM ignoring the anti invasion protest before the invasion of Iraq to Military family members in Fayetteville N Carolina who gathered against the war some years ago. The same weekend that the march against the war took place in N. Carolina the MSM aired the same damn clip of Terry Schaivo looking at the same fucking baloon 84 times and did not show one clip of the military families against the war. The same clip of Schaivo 84 times (I cdunted)
The MSM has been doing the warmonges bidding before the invasion of Iraq, by allowing the same warmongers who began repeating the unsubstantiated claims about Iran for the last five years never NEVER asking one damn challenging question. Like where is the hard substnatiated evidence? They have often repeated the debunked statement Iran wants “to wipe Israel off the map” so many times I have lost count. Professor Juan Cole debunked that misstatement. He said what the Iranian President said was “zionism will vanish from the pages of history”
I have kept a running log of how many MSMers who have allowed these unsubstantiated claims about Iran to be repeated (do not have the list with me)
But have heard Stephanapoulous allow Hillary Clinton and McCain say Iran “has a nuclear weapons program”
Face the Nation Bob Scheiffer allowed Obama to get away with this.
NPR’s Talk of the Nation’s host Neil Conan let John Bolton repeat unsubstantiated claims about Iran on several programs.
David Gregory has gone along with the Iran Plan and allowed these claims to be repeated.
Rachel Maddow has repeated them herself. Npr’s Terri Gross has done the same.
The closest that I have heard anyone of the MSMers come close to challenging any unsubstantiated claims about Iran to be challenged has been Chris Matthews and Olbermann. Everyone else just rolls over
Remember how El Baradei came out in early March 2003 and told the world that the Niger Documents were false.
I felt that Obama may have just had his “niger document” moment the other night. Claiming that Iran is in defiance of IAEA agreements without waiting for the IAEA’s determinnation and then stirring the flames by repeating unsubstantiated claims that what Iran has or is doing is illegal and Allowing Israel to continue to define our middle east policy by rolling over to their demands
By the same token, how can it be that those protests, both in the streets and in different form, are still very much going on in Iran, and nobody, but nobody, from the MSM to the Indie Press, to anybody else seems to think that the disclosure timing might have had internal rather than external motivations?
How can it be that we’re getting, from all sides, both the rah rah bomb bomb bomb Iran types and the Iran’s done nothing wrong types, mostly a discussion of American and/or Israeli politics and not Iranian politics? How can it be that nobody, but nobody mentions that regardless of who the cliques are on the U.N. Security Council, that the opinions of China on this subject are far less important than the two billion people in the world that see Iran as a cultural font or spiritual ally? How, after all these years, do we continue to never want to know what anybody else thinks, ever?
A week ago, the Obama administration announced that Robin Raphel would be working as an “area expert” with Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke. This morning, in an otherwise brilliant front page article in the New York Times about Lashkar-e-Taiba, we got the odd sentence, “So sensitive is the Kashmir issue that Indian officials bridle at any hint of American mediation.” Well, duh! Why do you think the Indians absolutely hated Robin Raphel the first time?
I would like to ask both Gleen Greenwald and Jeremy Schahill. After the very serious failing of the majority of the MSMer’s in the run up to the invasion of Iraq by not asking challenging, logical questions about the claims of WMD’s in Iraq and the validity of the pre-war intelligence.
Why is it that they still seem to by dumb struck? Why have they allowed five years to go by without chalenging the people who continuoulsy have been repeated unsubstantiated claims about Iran? Is it their pay checks have they been warned by their producers not to go there? WTF?
What has to happen for them to ask serious questions? Would they lose their jobs or something?
On some of the MSNBC clips that they were shoing of the alleged new underground facility in Iran that has weird “configurations” how can they not be reminded of the Colin Powell’s slide show at the UN.
Is our whole nation suffering from amnesia?
the only MSMer to ask the one tough question about Obama’s rant about Iran the other day was Chris Matthews.
On Monday night Chris started his show by asking “Will Israel attack Iran”
Most of us know that Israel and the I lobby are drivig the let’s attack Iran show. My question to both Glenn and Jeremy is
1. do they think “Israel will attack Iran”
2. Is Netanyahu and I lobby determining the time line for sanctions and the severity of the santions in the U.S?
3. Do you think any of the MSMer’s will ever ask the logical and reasonable questions about the claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. The only one I have heard questioning these claims is Pat Buchanan and when Buchanan looks like he represents the middle you know the country has shifted
4. Do you think what the IAEA reports means anything to the Obama administration?
5. What will it take for the MSMers to ask tough questions? Hundreds of thousands more dead injured and several more million people displaced?
Leen,go on over to Empire Burlesque. Chris Floyd has a fantastic new piece. BTW, he gives hat tip to Greenwald in the text of the thread:
Dry Heaves and Sucker Ploys: The Great New Iran “Crisis”
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 00:03
The new “Iran crisis” is such a sickening concoction of stupidity and lies that it almost defies comment. It certainly defies contemplation; even to think about it for thirty seconds is enough to bring on a bout of the dry heaves.
Dry Heaves and Sucker Ploys: The Great New Iran ”Crisis”Sep 29, 2009 … Chris Floyd – Empire Burlesque – High Crimes and Low Comedy in the American Imperium.
chris-floyd.com/…/1847-dry-heaves-and-sucker-ploys-the-great-new-iran-qcrisisq.html – Similar
http://www.chris-floyd.com/com…..isisq.html
I’d like to see Messrs. Scahill and Greenwald address this piece in The Nation by former WNET president William F. Baker on his belief that the government needs to do what most other advanced nations do and get serious about supporting a non-commercial news alternative to for-profit media. Sample passage:
Dear Mr Greenwald and Mr Scahill: Many people are turning to the Net for their “real” news and one thing television and even radio lacks is input from their audience unlike what the Net provides (aside from talk radio, which is sorely bereft of anything but the conservatives). With the Network Neutrality issues coming to fore, do you still see a threat that spigot will also be turned off?
As a former IT person who knows a little about things like throttling and ways to slow down the information flow to people accessing it, the explanation is often a complicated and technical reason to explain to laypeople as to why they are getting slow connections, etc whenever they do not pay enough.
Unfortunately in rural and low income inner city areas especially where high speed access is limited if not non-existent, low and middle income people are still limited to extremely low bandwidths. For instance in my state the only hi-speed access for rural folks is expensive satellite, which often openly throttles even things like downloading paid-for movies if the download it too long. Their “basic service” is often extremely expensive and unaffordable to most already, yet they openly say their customers are not paying enough and they require the individual customer to pay business-style prices for the privilege.
There are few organizations left to champion high speed access for low and middle income folks as there was in the 1990’s (such as the CTCs http://www.ctcnet.org ), particularly in rural and inner city low income areas. As anyone with Internet access knows, high speed access to a website is almost required anymore. To not have access is another barrier for low income and rural families, yet funding and advocacy is all but dead at this time.
Do you see Internet access and Network Neutrality to be one key to bypassing the MSM’s throttle hold on their cherry picked information that nobody but their own “choir” can respond? Do you see any improvement in advocacy to access by the governemnt and other organizations, and if so, where?
Cat in Seattle
great response and wonderful questions